Jacob Zuma finally has what he wants: an organisation he can mould in his own image according to his own needs and instincts.
Gone are the constraints of the ANC’s “democratic centralism”, elective conferences and term limits; Zuma’s version of the ANC, the MK Party, is his and his alone.
The seismic impact of his new creation in the election was unprecedented — from a standing start, the new party picked up 14% of the vote nationally and an astonishing 45% in KwaZulu-Natal. This was almost entirely attributable to the cult around Zuma, which makes him the standout choice as the FM’s political newsmaker of the year.
If they were ever implemented, the party’s core policies would destroy South Africa as a country, as well as its standing in the world as a modern democracy. Its plans include doing away with the secret ballot and requiring voters to publicly place their ballots in drums assigned to political parties; expropriation of all land without compensation and placing it under the custodianship of the state and traditional leaders; scrapping the 1996 constitution in favour of parliamentary sovereignty (as in the days of apartheid); nationalisation of banks, mines and major financial institutions; and holding a referendum on the death penalty.
Zuma’s political obituary has been written before. First, when Thabo Mbeki axed him as deputy president due to the arms deal stigma that surfaced in the corruption trial of Schabir Shaik; and more recently when he was forced to step down as president in the face of state capture testimony at the Zondo commission — evidence so overwhelming that even the ANC could not continue to ignore it.
In 2018 it was widely assumed that South Africa had finally closed the Zuma chapter — but once again those who had buried him had to eat their words. His political resilience and popular standing were seriously underestimated, not least by the ANC itself, as was the importance of ethnicity in our politics.
Almost single-handedly, Zuma’s new party precipitated the stunning fall in the ANC’s national support from 57% to 40% and the loss of its overall majority in parliament after three decades in power.
In the Zuma heartland of KZN, ANC support plunged to just 17% in May. This was a clear demonstration of the ethnic nature of Zuma’s appeal; he also secured large chunks of the Zulu vote in Mpumalanga and Gauteng.
Through painstaking negotiations, the ANC retained a place in the KZN government, forming a coalition with the IFP, the DA and the National Freedom Party (NFP).
It is this tenuous agreement that dictates the fate of the country — if it were not for the need to keep the DA onside in KZN, the ANC would long have abandoned working with Helen Zille and John Steenhuisen at a national level.
A stark danger for the ANC and for the country is a Zuma with access to state coffers, even if only at a provincial level in the short term.
It was Zuma, after all, who spearheaded the shift in the governing party from being a mass-based, community-linked movement into a patriarchal, elitist, nationalist organisation feeding off taxpayers via state structures. With 45% in KZN, Zuma and his party can almost taste the riches in the provincial trough; their snouts are prevented from plunging in only by the collaboration of the DA and NFP with the ANC.
Zuma’s party has so far been predictable — its intellectual thrust is shallow and its organisational and parliamentary processes are chaotic.
Zuma’s party has so far been predictable— its intellectual thrust is shallow and its organisational and parliamentary processes are chaotic
Floyd Shivambu, previously hailed as the brains trust of the EFF, is no Joel Netshitenzhe, Kader Asmal or Pallo Jordan — the kind of thinker the ANC was accustomed to in its glory days. After defecting to the Zuma camp, Shivambu has been thrust into the centre of MK’s growth attempts as its general secretary and organiser. This is despite his failure to grow the EFF into a potential governing party in its decade of existence.
Zuma is fully aware that his party may have reached peak Zulu support, which explains Shivambu’s recruitment. Shivambu hails from Limpopo, another populous province and one where the MK Party would like to make inroads into the ANC’s popularity.
Zuma’s re-entry onto the political stage has been dramatic, but can he sustain it?
Over the weekend, his party held its first anniversary celebration at Moses Mabhida Stadium in eThekwini, which is an MK stronghold. The stadium was half-full at best, but does that matter? The EFF and the ANC both drew capacity crowds at campaign rallies at the stadium this year, yet their results at the ballot box were derisory. (The EFF won 2% in the province.) So the science of stadiumology falls flat.
The biggest risk for MK is Zuma himself. He will be 88 when the party contests its next national election. The acid test of future growth will probably be the local government elections in 2026.
No other single leader in South Africa could capture the Zulu vote the way Zuma has. Many suspect his party’s lifespan is the same as his own. But others believe MK could survive on its own merits as a populist party with appeal for the millions who are suffering due to the dire socioeconomic situation. However, even with Zuma still at the helm, the party is in chaos — heavily factionalised, with parallel structures that are only legitimised by Zuma himself, when he is well enough to deal with organisational matters.
He has declared that MK will not hold an elective conference, so he will remain all-powerful. It is a recipe for implosion and further factionalism. Already there have been a number of court cases. One involved former members who were unilaterally removed from parliament. Another was brought by religious leaders who campaigned for the party but were ignored when plum posts were distributed after the polls — and then were expelled. Both the 10 former MPs and the All African Alliance Movement’s bishops Sophonia Tsekedi and Meshack Tebe won their cases against the party.
Given Zuma’s disdain for the judiciary, he is unlikely to adhere to the court rulings. He made clear how he views courts in a meeting with the ANC’s top officials in 2021. The transcript of that meeting, held virtually, sheds light on Zuma’s state of mind in forming MK.
“When I say you have neglected me, it is actually an understatement. You have stopped me from getting anything to help me on my side … My own comrades have facilitated that I must be suffocated financially, so that I am buried once and for all for crimes I did not commit,” he said in the meeting.
On the judiciary, he said: “We are forced to implement only what the unelected judiciary agrees with. This is not a democracy but a pseudo-democracy. It’s a little funny? We fought for democracy. Majority rules … What happens when they [the judiciary] are wrong in the decisions they take?
“What happens when they assume more powers than they are allowed? What happens when they unilaterally dissolve parliament tomorrow and establish their own structure in its place? There is something fundamentally wrong in this model,” he said, according to the transcript.
The legal woes Zuma constantly bemoans will continue in 2025. Ironically, this will likely fuel his attempts to build his party. His long-delayed corruption trial supposedly gets under way in April and is set down for five months. He will use his court appearances and their attendant publicity as opportunities to rage against the ANC of President Cyril Ramaphosa.
With the local government elections a year later, Zuma is likely to take full advantage to deepen his victimhood campaign, particularly as the state attorney was in January this year ordered to recoup about R28m in legal fees that Zuma has spent on his defence so far.
Zuma is seeking nothing less than to liquidate the Ramaphosa version of the ANC
The 2026 elections will likely be a crucial moment of truth for MK. Can it do even better in KZN and take control of major metros such as eThekwini, as well as rural municipalities that are home to the poorest of the poor?
So far, the party has not fared well in by-elections in KZN or elsewhere.
At MK’s birthday celebration over the weekend, Zuma encouraged “black parties” to join hands to take over South Africa in future elections. He sought to entice EFF leader Julius Malema to collapse the 10-year-old party into his own, but Malema flatly refused. At the EFF’s elective conference last week, Malema ruled out working with Zuma. Last month he declared MK the “biggest enemy”.
Zuma’s biggest opportunity to get his hands back on the levers of power is in 2027, when the ANC holds its elective conference.
Zuma is seeking nothing less than to liquidate the Ramaphosa version of the ANC, which would be much easier to achieve if he is working with the party in an alliance. The post-Ramaphosa era will bring this opportunity. The ANC elects a new president in 2027, potentially rendering Ramaphosa a lame duck; he could even fall victim to the party tradition of “recalling” presidents who fall out of favour.
So far the strongest contenders as his successor are Deputy President Paul Mashatile, secretary-general Fikile Mbalula and party chair Gwede Mantashe. Either Mashatile or Mantashe could easily slip into a working relationship with Zuma’s party, if it meant securing power again for the ANC without having to rely on the DA.
The Zuma chapter with all its possible destructive endings remains open, at least in the short term. He is one of the country’s most adept politicians at attaining power, but the most incompetent and destructive in exercising it — except when it comes to patronage.
The dark days are not necessarily behind us.
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